Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/167

 seat was opposite, except when guests were at the table, when John always honored the woman with the place. Ann led Lida to it but Jay discerned that his father did not approve of this implication of preference.

"Set that place on the side," he directed Beedy.

Jay warmed. "It's Lida's," he protested; but she laughed.

"Sit on the side with me, Jay," she bid him. "You know I've just dropped in."

Beedy was waiting and, not being re-commanded, he left things as they were; so, finally, Ann Dill went to the disputed place and Jay and Lida sat side by side.

John repeated grace, and Beedy, faultlessly, served dinner, without wine and without cigarettes at the table. The talk turned into the question and answer of people bent on avoiding the real matter in their minds, but now and then some one skirted it.

"I haven't known how to make ready your room," Ann Dill addressed Lida.

"Mine?" said Lida. "Where?"

Jay explained quickly. "Father asked us both to move in," he told his wife for the first time and, watching the slow stain of color in her cheek, he knew that more fully she felt the incident of the change of the chair.

Jay found himself with little appetite, and his father had none. Here in this room, as long ago as Jay could remember, he had sat with his father alone often, the two of them, at this big, sober table, morning and evening. Here at breakfast, sometimes with the sun streaming in, his father would admonish him upon the elements of suc-